


your ribs are peeking through your fur

by ghostwit



Category: One Piece
Genre: "Queen is good at his job" AU lol, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Gen, Hurt No Comfort, Like. borderline whump., M/M, Whoooops.
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-17
Updated: 2020-08-17
Packaged: 2021-03-06 01:21:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,243
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25945015
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ghostwit/pseuds/ghostwit
Summary: “Out of your system?” One of them says, he really couldn’t care less which, nudging him with a heeled boot.(In which Kid's torture at Udon is a degree more thorough.)
Relationships: Can be read platonic too ig but you gotta stretch fer it., Eustass Kid/Killer
Comments: 2
Kudos: 23





	your ribs are peeking through your fur

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Entangled](https://archiveofourown.org/works/25935769) by [Kawaiibooker](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kawaiibooker/pseuds/Kawaiibooker). 



> TW for self harm & a touch of suicidal ideation :| it's rough, boys. I'm no good at gauging these things, lemme know if it'd be better to bump that rating from T to M or if I need more content warnings or somethi.

“Out of your system?” One of them says, he really couldn’t care less which, nudging him with a heeled boot. His fingers should be around that damn ankle, looping hard until he can hear the crack of bone and feel that grotesque, satisfying  _ shift  _ under the skin as fat and muscle sloughs aside to make room for the splinter, but they’re not. They twitch lamely instead, thick and clumsy where they lay at his side, every ounce of willpower poured into the movement. Fuck,  _ fuck _ , everything hurts, every muscle in his body twitching and tensing sporadically in protest--in surrender. 

A fly, blood swollen and stout, waddles near Kid's ear, skimming the surface of what pools beside him, unperturbed by the way it sets his jaw quivering--painful, painful, spikes of electric heat in the cartilage below his ear.  _ Buzzing, buzzing _ . "Fuck you," his throat's a bed of coals, heat and smoke grating upwards, blood evaporated clean out and clinging thick.  _ Buzz _ . There’s a ripe laughter Kid can’t hear from the fuck-ugly one he can’t remember the name of. 

Dimly, he wonders what he  _ can _ do anymore. 

He wakes up with his ears ringing and hair plastered to his scalp with blood. The pain is there, it’s always there, he doesn’t think it’ll ever leave with the way it’s tearing hellfire through every neural pathway, but his body  _ listens  _ when he calls this time, arm jerking up with the guttural scream building in his chest. “ _ Where _ \--” strangled, the cry of a wounded animal that dissolves into a high, breathless whine of pain when that fucking boot is back to smack his arm out of the air, pin it to the ground. 

“You’re damn annoying. Not very _ e~xciting _ at all!” tipping into ugly laughter, still-warm cigar ash that lands somewhere on Kid’s throat, the tactile sensation less demanding than the burn in his limbs. “They were,” peace signs thrown up, a tickled grin,  _ die, _ Kid can’t help but bare his fangs and widen his eyes, even with the way the blood drying along his brow pulls harshly at the skin with his grimace, “collateral. You’re lucky you’re not, dog!” They’re hardly words, syllables going limp and cold somewhere on the journey from fat lip to bloated ear. The toe on his wrist twists, grinds the joint down so hard the skin chafes, and so he focuses on that instead of the way  _ collateral  _ echoes in his head. 

It hurts to breathe.  _ No one’s fault _ , someone had said ( _ Maybe their’s, though, ha!  _ and the wicked laugh that accompanied it stays tucked away somewhere deep to keep him from crying out in pain) _. _ It hurts to think. Hatred can only carry him so far, hatred and fury and fear and the way it spills black and brittle out of him and leaves him a drained vessel. His fault, maybe.  _ Fuck. _

* * *

Hatred doesn’t heal wounds the way real blood does, just smooths over them like warm tar. Cracks in the porcelain of Kid’s skin oozing sticky black, sluggish around hair that hangs limp in his eyes and leather that settles with an uncomfortable heat over aching muscle. 

(Hatred, too, prevented him from the lightless grace of death. He doesn’t deserve to join them when there’s still blood to spill. He doesn’t let himself be helped up--the hand that offers is mechanical, clean finished and hissing air from unseen valves, and isn’t that real damn funny, isn’t that cute?--vomits bile over the stained floors when he stands.) 

(His goggles clatter with the heap of cloth dropped on the stone floor, chipping at the edges in a way that would’ve, at any other time, earned the tosser a cracked skull. Kid can’t find it in himself to care. It’s another funny little blessing that no one offers to help him redress, the thought too reminiscent of the way Killer had maneuvered him in the catatonic fugue following the loss of his arm.) 

His captain’s coat--ha,  _ captain’s,  _ captain of what, dipshit?--sits heavy on his shoulders, and the weight of it makes him drag chipped nails from behind his ear, curling his hand around his chin as it passes to run white-to-pink lines over the exposed skin, each finger hitch-hitch-hitching over the cartilage of his throat and gliding over his chest with his ragged breath. Bad nervous habit shirked in childhood, shredding skin until his collarbones went raw and pink, grooves groomed impulsively down the side of his neck and over the jut of bone, something that Killer would--and fuck _ , Killer,  _ if that doesn’t make his stomach lurch and his skin go tight.  _ Plip, plip, _ blood dripping in that tender, untouched space between the shell of his ear and his hairline. 

They don't happen, those little flashes of  _ Heat had one of those,  _ or  _ I should show that to Wire,  _ where, for a single blissful moment, he slips back into the core of his existence, his rightful place at the helm with his partner’s hand in his and a crew flanking him. How he wishes. Their leaden bones sit right on his sternum, making his ribs curl under the weight to pierce his lungs with  _ every single _ breath. He’s almost properly angry, emotion welling up somewhere under the thick skin of apathy that keeps him from tearing the  _ flesh from his face, peeling it back, thumbs tucked in _ \--fuck, yeah,  _ god _ . The Pleasures giggle about him, mirth’s corpse strangled and strung up to dance. His face twitches. 

Someone walks past the table with drinks and his arm shoots up to slam their face clean through the table. The crunch of their nose, the way they stagger back with a bloodied tooth hanging by a wire-thin strand of gum (tempting, to reach over and pull, unspool the length of their mouth, all pink, giving flesh) is enough to wring a dry smile from him. 

He’s going to be sick. 

Somewhere in that tittering laughter, rising like the striking of a bell--a good morning alarm, Killer’s hair sweeping down in a tangled skein to tickle him awake, a low, rumbling  _ ffha, hafhah,  _ a warm chuckle under Killer’s breath, loud enough only for Kid, and a hand on his hip to call him for a meal-- _ fa fa fa _ . Suddenly, with a vengeance, he regrets the anger. Never has he heard it like this, either, high and panicked,  _ fafafa _ , like it’s being spat between the intake of breath. Killer’s never been a nervous laugher, his insecurity wouldn’t afford it, and something in it makes his blood boil, boil over until he’s seeing red.  _ This can’t be fucking real. _

Something dirty, about latching onto that helpless quality of the Pleasures after he’s impulsively backhanded one of them, nails-on-chalkboard laughter in place of that pained scream, taking root in the only thing he has holy and untouched. It almost pulls another bitter smile from him, his consciousness unkind as ever. He’s gone digging for corpses in the soft mud of his grey matter and found them, clammy fingered and cold when he clasps them. Another laugh, almost manic,  _ fafafa!,  _ somewhere distant, mingling with the ambient noise. Maybe it’s not too late to join his crew after all. 

He’s not killed any of Kaido’s men yet--not to his knowledge, at least--but he’ll let whatever’s spilling this horrendous noise be his first. If he can’t find a source, well, he supposes he’s one of Kaido’s men too, now. Ha. 

**Author's Note:**

> GDJYG JESS' AU SO GOOD (BRAIN EXPLODES) [ Here's her iteration ](https://archiveofourown.org/works/25935769) plz click plz read allow your mind to be blown. Here's my take on this T_T thank you very much for all the food, thank you very much.
> 
> Just like.... ourgh many thoughts...may end up working with this concept again... It IS meant to be Killer at the end there and not just, like, a product of Kid's ~~twisted xD mind~~ but I thought it'd be fun to make it ambiguous. 
> 
> Feel free to leave a comment if you'd like :) Much wuv, thank you for reading.
> 
> hazeism.tumblr.com


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